No Longer Human ( PDFDrive )

72
thought it a good strategy to make people laugh
when asking favors of them.) Under Horiki's tutelage
I also began to frequent the pawnshops. Despite
everything I was chronically short of money.
And I was incapable of living all by myself in
those lodgings where I didn't know a soul. It terrified
me to sit by myself quietly in my room. I felt
frightened, as if I might be set upon or struck by
someone at any moment. I would rush outside either
to help in the activities of the movement or to make
the round of the bars with Horiki, drinking cheap
sake wherever we went. I almost completely neglected
both my school work and my painting. Then in
November of my second year in college I got involved
in a love suicide with a married woman older than
myself. This changed everything.
I had stopped attending classes and no longer
devoted a minute of study to my courses; amazingly
enough I seemed nevertheless to be able to give
sensible answers in the examinations, and I managed
somehow to keep my family under the delusion that
all was well. But my poor attendance finally caused
the school to send my father a confidential report. My
elder brother, acting on behalf of my father, thereupon
addressed me a long, sternly phrased letter,
warning me to change my ways. More pressing causes
of grief to me were my lack of money and the jobs